


The Iatrogenic Interrogation Inhibition

by The_Blue_Fenix



Category: Middleman
Genre: F/M, PTSD, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-22
Updated: 2009-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blue_Fenix/pseuds/The_Blue_Fenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The Iatrogenic Interrogation Inhibition</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Iatrogenic Interrogation Inhibition

The Iatrogenic Interrogation Inhibition

A bit darker in spots than my usual. A bit sexier in others.

Two times a tiny bit of kink worked out for MM and Dubbie and one time it didn't.

I would like to blame Jesse "the governing body" Ventura.

Tuesday

Wendy Watson drifted awake in a wonderful world of touching. The king-sized bed was already warm; the hands roving over her body even more so. One slid under her, tweaking a nipple. She sprawled flat on her stomach and let out an encouraging _mmmm_. The bed shifted and a heavy furnace-warm body was half on, half beside her.

She grinned into the pillow. "You'd better hurry, darling. I've got a big scary boyfriend and he'll be back from the bathroom any minute."

A mock-threatening growl. Teeth scraped lightly over the back of her neck. The nipple-tweaking hand slid to her mons; his whole weight came down. Fingers jabbed possessively, found her sopping wet and didn't hesitate.

He braced up on his elbows, hands around her forearms in a forceful, unnecessary grip that had real sting to it. His hands and his mouth on her neck and his cock were the only fixed points in the universe. Wendy had lost the mental acuity to count, other than "lots and lots." She made urgent chimp-like noises, couldn't count them either. She knew his name now but it was 'Boss' that broke loose under the last and longest orgasm, snapped every scrap of his control in turn. A perfect blend of pleasures, the physical of her own orgasm and the emotional power trip that didn't have a damn thing to do with who was holding who down. He got naked for her and nobody else, stripped not only of uniform but of the whole role of being Middleman.

Best. Personal sex toy. Ever.

Wednesday

What Boss had insisted on calling the Esoteric Ectoplasmic Expedition was the shortest mission in Wendy's experience. Three and a half hours from red ball to wrap-up, even with a visit to an alternate dimension and the resulting relativistic time distortion. They still needed a trip to the locker room before starting the after-action paperwork. Because, ectoplasm. He chivalrously let her have first chance at the hot water; he usually did.

Wendy emerged from the shower toweling her hair. Her skin was perfectly warm and dewy. No actual drips, but an all-over mist that was more condensed steam than water straight from the shower. He sat on the bench in front of their lockers, naked but still dry, lost in thought.

Wendy moved, an utterly un-self-conscious scratching. He had highly trained, 180-degree peripheral vision. She had his full attention even before he looked directly at her. Boss was a pretty pale guy – better living through sunscreen. She saw a bit of a blush developing over his cheekbones. Even now.

Wendy raised her arms, gave her shoulders a really good stretching out. Scratched idly again. "We're getting into swimsuit season. I don't know that I'm going to have time for swimming, but I usually go bare in the summer. It's cooler." A slight, wicked smile. She stopped just inside his arms' reach. "Any preferences?"

A low purr. "This calls for research." Long strong fingers grabbed her by the ass, pulled her up against his face. Wendy clutched his hair, put a foot up on the bench beside him for better access.

Wendy was making the chimp noises again before she remembered that she'd come in here with a plan. Pushed at the sides of his head. She had trouble convincing him she meant it when she'd only convinced about half of her own impulses. "Boss." He moved back a little. Wendy did too, pressed down on his shoulders in a firm stay-here. "Boss, close your eyes."

He did. Wendy bent down, tasted herself on his lips. Explored there for a while before moving further down. The insanely cute chin dimple, the smooth underside of his throat. Licked a line along one collarbone, flat oval male nipple. It hardened under her attention; his breathing changed. She crouched, towel under her knees on the cold tile floor. Traced the outline of perfectly defined stomach muscles, not much body hair in her way. Thrust her tongue suddenly into his navel. _See? This is what it feels like_. He shook a little and fisted his hands in her wet hair.

Target acquired.

Beautiful shallow curve like some sex-crazed sculptor's masterpiece. Velvety head with the delicate, ultra-sensitive ridge around it like a crown. The faint, clean musk she'd know anywhere with her eyes closed. Cupped his other two best friends, felt them rise and crinkle. He tried to talk, one of his non-profane extended metaphors, but it turned into _fuck_ every time Wendy flicked her tongue. He gave up and just made general noises of approval. With a little practice, she had perfect control over the volume.

Being his personal sex toy: best. Hobby. Ever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part Two of Two

Part Two of Two

… and one time it didn't.

Thursday

Just like in a normal office, supplies and equipment migrated from one work area to another. Wendy's 'Things Mankind Was Not Meant To Know' detector with custom decals wasn't in the main control room. Or the armory. Or the low-security holding cell. Wendy noticed a lot of scary objects had been removed from the wall cabinets of that cell since the Guy Goddard incident.

The high-security holding cell had one major piece of furniture; an interrogation 'chair' that was actually a man-tall leaning board at a fifteen or twenty degree angle. Wendy had seen zombies, aliens, and the occasional mad scientist strapped to the thing in her short career. The restraints didn't injure anyone, human or otherwise, but wiggling out of them was not an option. A forehead-restraining metal strap and a big pile of chains were available for extreme cases. Lots of clear floor space all around the chair, a few shallow shelves and cabinets against the walls.

The TMWNMTN was on a shelf in the back corner, slightly dusty. "There it is." Wendy retrieved the gadget. The Middleman paused in front of the chair, his attention caught by some leftover paperwork.

Wendy grinned to herself and set the tool back down. _Best. Blow job. Ever._ "Hey, Boss." Because of Sensei Ping's training, she unlike any other human being on the planet she could catch him off guard. "I've got an idea."

She overbalanced the Middleman, steered him with a shove so his back came down hard against the interrogation chair.

He instantly pushed off against it, faster than she'd ever seen him move, every bit of energy focused and committed. The Sensei-Ping part of Wendy's brain recognized the reflex arc as a whole if not in detail. Sidestepped, but nowhere near fast enough...

The Middleman had more willpower than anyone she'd ever met. Stopping himself in mid-charge was impossible by sheer physics, but he wrenched to one side. Enough, combined with Wendy's own dodge, that a stone-hard elbow swept on by instead of crushing her throat. The conflicting forces threw him wildly off balance, slammed him shoulder-first into a wall cabinet. The impact echoed like a cannon.

Wendy had the door behind her, and every impulse to flee. She wasn't sure what kept her in the room, love and trust or fear of turning her back. His eyes showed whites all the way around, fixed on her without recognition. A total stranger, lethal as a tiger. Wendy was swearing steadily in her own mind but on the outside she stayed as silent as a mouse between a cat's paws. Held her empty hands far out to the sides of her body in case her life depended on it.

He took in the gesture. Took part of a step back, a human expression replacing the berserker snarl. Fists slowly unclenched. Straightened a little from an unarmed-combat crouch. Registered her not-an-attacker status, though Wendy wasn't sure if her whole identity came through. Better, but not in control of himself. Wendy had seen that control shaken, even damaged once. Never snapped _off_ like a fender in a car wreck.

She didn't need telling that the Middleman was as appalled as she was. And as scared. _I've seen you at the end of the world, but I've never seen you terrified. I didn't think you had it in you._ "Boss. Middleman. Clarence." She'd never used his old name before. She needed to reach every facet of him, past present and future. "I'm okay. I'm not hurt."

She knew in theory he had a kill-at-one-strike mode. Sensei Ping aside, he wouldn't have been much of a Navy SEAL otherwise. But he used violence as a last resort, a rare one given the wit and strategy and better-than-human technology in line ahead of it. Not _first_. Never, ever at her.

He took a deep breath; Wendy flinched. His shoulders sagged hopelessly. "I didn't..." Another breath. "I owe you an explanation. I need a minute. Please. I'm going to the hall, outside."

He was the man she knew again; her heartbeat slowed down. _That gonna-do-great-things adaptability of mine I hear so much about._ "You don't have to go."

"Dubbie." He did, and not for her sake. He gave her lots of safety room, passing around her and out the door.

Wendy breathed easier with a closed door between them. She didn't like herself for knowing that. Noticed the metal wall cabinet half caved in where he'd landed. _Not a damn thing to do with his kink boundaries._ He'd ruled out spicy suggestions from her, once or twice, without being even slightly impolite.

Wendy focused all her attention on the interrogation chair as if checking clues at a crime scene. She got very angry.

The Middleman waited several yards down the hallway. He'd locked down his self-control to a zombie-like level, left Wendy as much room as she needed to feel safe. He'd stand like that in front of a firing squad. Except he'd look the firing squad in the eye.

"I'm not hurt, Boss," she repeated.

He wasn't crying. It looked like hard work. "No excuses, Dubbie. That was unforgivable."

He had more to say, but she was afraid to hear it. Too fast, "That's kind of my call, isn't it?" Wendy took a second to get some control of her own. "Just tell me. Is he dead? Whoever tortured you." She let the word hang in the air.

His voice was quiet, tired. "That isn't exactly what happened."

"It never crossed my mind, because you haven't got any scars. But Ida can fix almost anything, can't she? On the outside." Wendy breathed. "I need to hear a story with a SEAL team to the rescue. Or your Middleman and a big fucking gun. Lots of explosions, lots of dead enemies. Help me out."

"There aren't any enemies. I wasn't captured."

"Then somebody's got a seriously perv definition of _friend_."

"I can't disagree." His head dipped a little. "Survival training, in case we were stranded in enemy territory. NATO procedure, or it was at the time... SERE. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Resistance is the relevant part. Given the probability we would be forcibly interrogated if captured, we were familiarized with likely methods."

Wendy needed a second to change mental gears. "It wasn't them. It was _us_. Somebody in your own uniform, somebody in my _dad's_ uniform strapped you down and hurt you." Her vision went red around the edges.

The Middleman had gotten much of his calm back. Some. "They meant to help us. On the theory that knowing what to expect would keep us oriented if the real thing happened. Better than being stampeded into panic by dread and ignorance."

So he'd been left with well-informed, realistic dread instead. _What did they do?_ If she asked, he'd answer. Wendy wasn't sure she could stand to hear.

He knew her too well. "They'd be foolish to damage a valuable piece of government property. Years and who knows how much money invested in our training by that point. We all knew that, knew the training course had a time limit." Shrug. "It helped. Which was probably counterproductive to the stated goal, but none of us felt like pointing out the problem."

Wendy had forgotten to be afraid. She came closer, laid a hand on his arm. A tremble somewhere in the system. She was right there with the Middleman on avoiding profanity now, if only because no words were bad enough. "Avoid the Christmas rush. Get your PTSD on sale now."

He tried for a tone of cool irony, missed completely."It wasn't well considered, no."

"Look at me." Wendy held a palm over his pounding heart. "I'm sorry too."

His eyes went distant. "You didn't know the gun was loaded."

Then he took a step back. "And that's why. Wendy Watson." He'd already been calling her 'Dubbie' the day they met. "Your sheer professional talent has always been ample reason for having you here, you know that. The world needs you. I hope..."

She had to stop that sentence. _You never say anything you don't mean, not to me._ She'd discovered a mellow side to him, these months, but the granite-hard decisiveness was there too. "No you don't!" She grabbed his hand back, crowding him. His control held, but that wasn't the fear that owned her now.

"You're not a weapon, you're a person. Having scars inside doesn't change that." She breathed unsteadily. "I'm flaky. I'm not _stupid_. 'No surprise bondage' will not be a hardship. I'd do that anyway … I never want to make you unhappy." Too late. "Nothing's changed."

His voice was steady, hopeless. "But it has. We've both believed, all this time, that our _work_ keeps you in danger. Not our personal relationship. I put the world's safety in front of yours, choosing you, but at least loving you too didn't worsen that risk." Painful swallow. "We were wrong. I can't guarantee your safety."

Wendy gestured at herself. Her uniform, her gun, by implication all the skill and responsibility she'd earned here. "My safety is not your job."

"It is when I'm the threat."

She could see, behind his eyes, the attack that nearly happened. She'd have anything up to four minutes to live with a crushed trachea. Their training included knowledge and skills equivalent to a paramedic's. Wendy had done a simulation that gave the gory reality as well as the textbook steps of an emergency tracheotomy. She had another flash, vivid as memory, not just of him trying to save her but of the screaming in his head. No image at all of him leaving the room if he'd failed.

He always had both their lives in his hands, the job was like that. Not this way. _I guess we've finally found a death you're afraid of. No surprise it's not just your own._

He didn't need heartfelt speeches of devotion, at least not yet. "You want analytical? I can do analytical. This happened a long time ago, yeah? You'd have been younger than me."

The rational tone helped him. "By three or four years, yes."

Three or four years ago she'd been chin-deep in art school. No worries except writing rude aphorisms on the windshield of Lacey's philosophy major ex-boyfriend's car. _You were just a kid. You swore them an oath, and they did that to you. They dared._ But she'd promised him logic, not rage. "Any other flashbacks I should know about? Because you cannot tell me you haven't been under stress since then."

"No. No others." His expression changed. "No one else has been this close to me."

No one else would, Wendy thought. It wasn't the ten years younger that made him handle her like glass sometimes, it was the ten inches shorter. But tiny or not, she had combat skills. If he once decided he was too dangerous for her, he'd never put a lesser woman at risk. "You know damn well _we've_ done all kinds of things all kinds of ways. This is the first problem besides exhaustion." He didn't smile, but the atmosphere lightened a little bit. "Those are reasonable odds," Wendy said.

"You're very brave. Which is not news." The Middleman studied her. "We should take time to think about this."

Thinking had its limits, in Wendy's opinion. "How long?"

"Until … Sensei Ping hasn't been in town in months. You've assimilated what he's already taught you; it's time for more. He always assumed you'd be fighting off bigger and stronger attackers. Focus even more on that aspect."

Wendy put both hands on her bigger, stronger beloved's chest. "I'm all for graduate seminars in ass-kicking. Not so much the waiting. For months now I've been able to touch you pretty much whenever I wanted. Have you touch me. It's probably an addiction."

She caught his hands. The Middleman let her guide them along her ribs, up to her shoulders. Turned to stone when she tried to put them on her neck.

Wendy looked into his eyes, completely calm. "I know what you can do. I also know who you _are_. A good man, not a weapon. I won't let you treat yourself like one." She leaned in. "You'll just have to trust you. I do."

He'd left his hands loosely on her shoulders when she stopped trying to move them. He raised one now, cupped her cheek. All that raw power held back to a feather-light touch. "Dubbie." Not so much a whisper as a rumble she felt where their chests touched. "I think you're right about addiction."

"That doesn't make it a bad thing," she whispered back. "You can't just erase memories that hurt. That's life. But you can put a lot of good ones on top of them. It's all about …" she grinned at herself. "About the man you choose to be." Turning one of his own phrases against him.

His eyes sparkled at the irony. "Addiction? I think you've invented outright mind control." Heaved her suddenly to face-to-face level, molded their lips together. She was too dazed to do much more than hang on with all four limbs. She gasped for fresh air when the Middleman let her have her mouth back. His eyes fixed on the door of the holding cell. "Not here."

"Your place or mine, boss?" A little giddy. "Oh, yeah. Same place."

He ran his teeth lightly over the side of her neck. Started carrying her with no apparent effort. Not the stairs, or the elevator; the archive room.

Wendy vaguely remembered an old, squashy couch behind one of the rows of bookshelves. "Or, why mess with a long commute." She went limp, happily.


End file.
